Fotochatter Blog Feed

White House official slams Democratic Cong. Anthony Weiner, saying he should have "manned-up" in NY Mayor's race. Just sexist or homophobic too?

Manned up? So is the White House saying that Weiner is acting like a woman or a gay? And which one does our White House find worse? On the day after a huge civil rights defeat for the gay and lesbian Americans, in a battle in which we were abandoned by President Obama and the Democratic National Committee , it's telling that they White House is using effeminate slurs to defame Democrats who question why the President didn't bother lifting a finger to help in a far too many races. Mayor Bloomberg won yesterday, but not by much. The President of the United States, who is also the leader of the Democratic Party, didn't really help the Democratic candidate for mayor in New York, Bill Thompson. When Rep. Anthony Weiner pointed that out, someone at the White House shot back with a very nasty, and rather homophobic, attack on the Congressman from New York. And if you don't think it's a slur against women or gays, then imagine the White House saying that Barbara Boxer or Barney Frank need to "man up" - never gonna happen. It's a slur used against men who supposedly act like women or homosexuals. From Ben Smith at Politico : Bloomberg’s meager five-point win left Democrats pondering what might have been if New York’s Democratic donors hadn’t turned their back on Thompson, if its politicians had worked for him, and most of all if President Barack Obama had offered anything more than the lamest words of praise. “Maybe one of those Corzine trips could have been better spent in New York. Who knows?" remarked New York Rep. Anthony Weiner, who weighed his own run for mayor, referring to the White House’s devout attention to the New Jersey contest. “Maybe Anthony Weiner should have manned-up and run against Michael Bloomberg,” shot back a White House official, who attributed the night’s results across the board to anti-incumbent fervor. The New York race deepened the impression that a White House that prides itself on resisting conventional political analysis had badly misjudged the key contests Tuesday — committing itself most heavily to a New Jersey election that Republican Chris Christie won handily, studiously avoiding a referendum to preserve same-sex marriage that was defeated in Maine and giving up too early in New York City. It is amazing how often anonymous White House officials attack other Democrats and Democratic allies. And "manned-up? Sounds like a lot like "sissy." Weiner only pointed out the obvious. The White House should have stood up and supported the Democratic candidate, and supported the Democratic base in other states as well . And, does Obama know and approve of how obnoxious his senior staffers are towards other Democrats? That wasn't the change we signed up for a year ago today. We expected leadership and a new direction. Manned-up. Someone should look in a mirror.

I Heart NJ

'"I Heart NJ"' is the third episode in the fourth season of the television series 'How I Met Your Mother'. It originally aired on October 6, 2008.

- Plot -
Ted is complaining about having to travel so far to see Stella in New Jersey, as she is often asleep by the time he gets there. It also means he misses some key events with the group, like Barney trying to pick up a lesbian by dressing in feminine clothing, and Robin getting promoted. When he tells Stella about this, she suggests the group comes to New Jersey for a night out. At first, the group reject this idea, making fun of New Jersey, and also reminding him of how much he hates the place himself. He talks them into accepting, and says that soon he won't have to go back again, as Stella and her daughter will move in with him after they are married.

Robin is sick of her job, as she often reports stupid stories and has to make bad, and sometimes insensitive puns. After being offered a major anchor job, she immediately ...

How Anne Heche survived her own life

She was sexually abused as a child by her father. She became a teen TV soap star and came out as one half of Tinseltown's most famous lesbian couple – which destroyed her career. Now a star again, Anne Heche is in line for the perfect Hollywood ending Anne Heche sat in a chair while a former professional soccer player from Israel drew dots on her scalp with a black marker. Piny of Beverly Hills has been a guru of wigs and hair extensions since he started here in 1975, with clients like Liberace and Dolly Parton. He also created John Travolta's flowing mane in Pulp Fiction . "It's like having a toolbox I never knew existed," Heche said, holding up a strip of long blonde hair dyed to match her own that would be sewn on to a foundation of tiny braids along her scalp. Heche said she worked with Piny to create her two latest characters in the same way she would a costume designer. "These make it easier for my hair to stay in a style," she said of the three rows of extensions Piny recommended. "And if I have to reshoot and already have a different look, I can just take the character off the shelf. But since I'm doing publicity for these two roles now, it's important to look how I do as these characters. I've learned that it's jarring for people to see what a chameleon I am." And how. For a woman who recently turned 40, Heche has had more than her share of incarnations. She started life as the sexually abused child of an evangelical Christian father, who was also a closeted gay man who died of Aids in 1983, and his eerily compliant wife, who after his death became a Christian therapist, lecturing on behalf of James Dobson's Focus on the Family about "overcoming" homosexuality. Fresh out of high school in 1987, Heche had a four-year starter career as a soap star, playing good and evil twins on Another World , for which she won a Daytime Emmy in 1991. That led to a period as a budding Hollywood leading lady, co-starring with Johnny Depp in Donnie Brasco , Robert De Niro and Dustin Hoffman in Wag the Dog and Harrison Ford in Six Days, Seven Nights , while off screen she veered through relationships with a variety of father figures, including Lindsey Buckingham of Fleetwood Mac and Steve Martin. Then, at the 1997 Vanity Fair Oscar party, lightning struck and she fell madly in love with Ellen DeGeneres, becoming half of the most famous lesbian couple in America. Because she had never given any indication of being gay, Heche was pilloried as both publicity hound and career opportunist – though in retrospect, given her experience with her duplicitous father and homophobic mother, it could seem that her attraction to DeGeneres had less to do with acting than acting out. The romance actually destroyed her prospects as a leading lady; the deal for Six Days, Seven Nights was the last one made as the affair became public, and no more were offered. When the relationship soured after three and a half years and the couple split, Heche experienced what seemed to be a psychotic breakdown, giving in to Celestia, whom she described as an alternate personality she had lived with for years, one who ultimately believed a spaceship was coming to take her to a better place. Her 2001 memoir, Call Me Crazy , recounted that episode and started her on the road to career recovery. Feature films mostly gave way to guest roles on shows such as Ally McBeal and Nip/Tuck , and she starred on Broadway in Proof and Twentieth Century , for which she earned a Tony nomination for best performance by a leading actress in a play. Barely a year after splitting with DeGeneres – and Celestia – she married Coleman Laffoon, a cameraman who worked on the documentary Heche was making on DeGeneres's stand-up tour before their breakup. (It was never broadcast.) Entertainment Weekly described Laffoon as "a jovial golden retriever of a man whom Heche credits with picking her up, brushing her off and putting her on a path to stability". They had a son, Homer, now seven, but the path to stability reached an impasse, and Heche and Laffoon divorced last year. In March Heche gave birth to her second son, Atlas, whose father, James Tupper, was her co-star in the ABC series Men in Trees , which was cancelled last year after two seasons. She's on a definite upswing now, both personally and professionally. She co-stars with Ashton Kutcher in the upcoming movie Spread , playing a corporate lawyer in LA, a savvy older woman who relishes the control of "keeping" Kutcher as her toy boy even as she frantically tries to appear his contemporary physically. And she has a supporting role in the critically acclaimed HBO series Hung , playing Jessica, the ex-wife of Ray (Thomas Jane), a broke and losing high-school basketball coach who is forced to make ends meet as a gigolo. Jessica, his former girlfriend, dumps him for a successful dermatologist in a desperate bid to reinvent herself and find some meaning in her life. Heche has done the same thing so often herself, making brave new starts seemingly fuelled by great gulps of hope and wonder, that she brings an unexpected poignancy to the role. "We auditioned a lot of people," says Colette Burson, the co-creator of Hung . "It is incredibly difficult to find beautiful, talented, funny women over 35." The hardest part may be getting them to admit they're over 35, but Heche doesn't lie about her age. She has been working since she was 12. Her first role was in a New Jersey dinner-theatre production of The Music Man . She was paid $100 a week, which helped support her family, who had lost their home and were living with neighbours. Eight days after giving birth to Atlas, she was on set, shooting Hung . Her work ethic never changes, and the invitation of her book's title aside, she did not seem crazy in the two days I spent with her. She appeared to be a focused mother and a loving partner to Tupper. Though she is perfectly capable of uttering sentences like: "Every character puts me through a journey of acceptance about myself," it is hard to discount either her intelligence or her intention. Maybe it's because there's an integral part of her – the abused part – that remains vigilant, a shadow of childhood anxiety that still hovers, a tireless antenna seeking approval. She has an uncanny ability to intuit who she needs to be in any situation. As an actress, she uses this to feed her inner chameleon, and it informs her instincts in plumbing a character's depths, either with lashings of passion or unanticipated fits of whimsy, both of which are just unhinged enough to be riveting. In her pre-screening remarks to the audience at the Hung premiere, Burson quoted Alexander Payne, who directed the pilot, on working with Heche: "Every take was different. Every take was true." Her all-American good looks and Midwestern-mom vibe keep her a saleable, pretty package. And her impulse toward confession, that beloved all-American pastime, keeps her struggles and dramas front and centre. (DeGeneres has said little publicly about their relationship, perhaps because in Heche's memoir, the love she expresses for DeGeneres comes across as genuine.) But Heche's life seems naturally to generate and regenerate material. She has been up and down, back and forth, like a roller coaster that keeps threatening to derail yet manages, somehow, to stay its course. When Piny was sceptical of Heche's choice to let me watch two hours of the unglamorously intimate process of tightening her hair extensions, she just laughed. "No more secrets," she told him. "Not for me, you know that." With Heche's hair firmly in place, we climbed into her slightly used Jaguar sedan and headed toward Shutters hotel in Santa Monica, where Tupper and Homer were spending the day, using the pool. Driving with Heche felt like being back in high school. She is an easy person to be with, relaxed and chatty. She wore jeans and a flowing top and huge sunglasses. Her extended blonde hair became her, and her face had no discernible pores or oil glands. People have killed for less, but the urge never quite struck – maybe because she makes no distinctions between herself as a celebrity and the mere mortals she encounters in the course of a day. That attitude seems rooted both in her willingness to work (that "work is worth" was a mantra she acquired early) and the fact that, as a mere mortal herself, she needs her pay-cheque. A sticking point at the heart of her acrimonious split with Laffoon was the very issue of employment. Their initial arrangement was that she would be the breadwinner and he would stay home and take care of Homer. In May 2007, after they separated, the San Jose Mercury News ran an article, "Anne Heche's Husband Says Actress Is a Bad Mother," based on an Associated Press report that an accountant hired on Laffoon's behalf offered "a guideline of $45,239" for payments by Heche in monthly spousal and child support. Laffoon claimed Heche left her son with nannies or assistants in her trailer while she was filming Men in Trees in Vancouver and "after one visit, she forgot to return Homer's favourite shoes and 'his bedtime stuffed animals which… caused him extreme distress.'" Lisa Kasteler, Heche's publicist, was quoted as saying, "For the past several years, the child's father has refused to get a job in order to contribute financially to the child's care." In March the Los Angeles Superior Court ruled that Heche had to pay Laffoon a lump sum of $515,000 and $3,700 in monthly child support, and assume 75 per cent of Homer's private-school tuition. When I asked her about it, she kept her tone even. "I pay an extraordinary amount of money to him, and it's unfortunate because it is what I believe keeps him from getting a job," she said. I reached Laffoon, a registered real estate agent in Los Angeles, by phone. He chose not to respond directly, saying only, "I'm glad it's over and everyone seems to be moving on with their lives." Heche agreed about that. "I have that beautiful seven-year-old boy. The blessing of his life is that he adores his stepdad, and they have a beautiful relationship. Homer feels like he has more love in his life. I'd like to leave it there." So she's working as fast as she can. For Hung , she was originally asked to audition for the leading role of Ray's pimp, now played by Jane Adams. "Who am I not to take a meeting?" Heche said, turning on to the freeway. "I didn't get that part, but then they thought of me for the other. So, great. Listen, one job doesn't ever change the path of your career." That's certainly not the prevailing wisdom out here, where "stars" are insulted if they aren't handed a role just for being. But for Heche, work has always been less about entitlement than salvation. "People like people who work," she said. At Shutters, 3½-month-old Atlas was sleeping in a cabana while his nanny watched him. Tupper and Homer were both in the water. Heche stopped to say hi on her way to the room where we would talk. When she asked, "Can I have a kiss?" they swam toward her simultaneously, and all three laughed. Heche, who's understandably marriage-shy at the moment, told me about a recent trip to Paris. "James and Homer asked me to marry them together as a family, and all three of us decided that we would forever be engaged," she said. "From that moment Homer said that he would like to call James his stepdad. Although recently he says James is my Dad II." Before settling on the couch, Heche poured milk into a cup of Earl Grey tea. We talked first about Spread . The character she plays is hard-bitten yet so insecure that she resorts to vaginal surgery to remain appealing to younger men. "It's interesting when all of a sudden you're the older woman," Heche said. "I had to ask myself: 'What am I not confident about? Why does this scare me?' As a theme in my life, I've always looked at how I can rid myself of shame, so I definitely saw this character as a way to get rid of shame about getting older. Did I understand that there was a person who wanted so desperately to feel loved that they would put themselves through almost any trial to stay connected to her youth? Sure. So I had a lot of compassion for this woman." Jessica, her character in Hung , has a somewhat softer cast. "I really wanted to tell a more loving tale about women," she said, "that we are fragile, loving people who get to moments in our lives and make some silly mistakes. I think she still has a lot of love for Ray; it ignites every time she sees him. I think she makes a decision with an open heart, but looks back and says, 'How did it go wrong?' It's what I see in so many women: 'How did I make this choice? How did I get here?' " The relationship between Ray and Jessica has some parallels to that of Heche's parents, who met while in high school. Her father, Don, was a handsome golden boy, good at everything; her mother, Nancy, was excited and in love. Though there the story took its own turn. After Don dropped out of medical school, he never found a profession that lasted, becoming a part-time church organist and choir director, hatching doomed schemes to make money and stowing his family in rural Ohio in a religious compound. In her own 2006 memoir, The Truth Comes Out , Nancy Heche wrote that she essentially missed the 1960s, never reading a newspaper, listening to the radio or watching television. Don disappeared for long periods, living in New York City, doing odd jobs. He claimed to have worked as a driver for Brooke Shields's mother. He deified movie stars, pushing his children to pursue show business. Heche had four siblings. The eldest, Susan, also wrote a memoir about growing up with a closeted gay father – Anonymity , published in 1994 under her married name, Susan Bergman. She died of brain cancer in 2006. The second daughter, Cynthia, died in infancy, from a heart defect. The only son, Nathan, a target for much of his father's nonsexual abuse, died three months after his father, in a car accident that some surmised might have been suicide. Abigail, now a jewellery designer living in Michigan, was the other child; Anne, the baby. Anne's account in her own memoir of her father's sexual abuse and her mother's denial of it is devastating. She writes that Nancy Heche told her that as an infant she couldn't get a nappy on Anne properly because of sores and rashes she had on her vagina, but she never knew why. Anne got herpes from her father, and in 1983, after he died of Aids, doctors told her she would have to wait years to learn that she was not infected. She was 14 then; she wrote that the abuse stopped when she was 12. Heche said that when she called her mother – during her seventh year in therapy – to confront her about the abuse, her mother ended the conversation by saying, "Jesus loves you, Anne," before hanging up. In her memoir, Nancy Heche, who is now 72, never addresses the issue of Anne's abuse. I contacted her publisher, Regal Books, for a response to her daughter's comments, and was told by its marketing and publicity co-ordinator that Nancy's agent, Mark Sweeney, said his client would have no comment. Perhaps the most damning comment came from Heche herself, who told me she has never introduced either of her children to her mother. Nor has she read her mother's book. "My mother's had a very tragic life," she said. "Three of her five children are dead, and her husband is dead. That she is attempting to change gay people into straight people is a way to keep the pain of the truth out. People wonder why I am so forthcoming with the truth, and it's because the lies that I have been surrounded with and the denial that I was raised in bore a child of truth and love. My mother preaches to this day the opposite of that core of my life. It is no mistake that she still stands up against love. And one wonders why I'm not rushing to have her meet my children!" Understanding the circumstances of Heche's childhood makes it easier to see past the publicity circus of her relationship with DeGeneres. "My love was so all-consuming for a human being who would tell the truth," she told me. "The impact that has on a child who grew up with such shame about who she was, who her father was, the disease he died of, the hatred my mother had for anything gay. And I got to participate in a loving, truthful celebration of the way I thought the world should be." She turned up her palms. "How could that destroy my career? I still can't wrap my head around it." That is naive at best; Hollywood executives are notoriously skittish about homosexuality and its potential to harm their bottom line. The rap on Heche is that when her bid for greater glory as DeGeneres's other half failed, rushing to marry a man was the only plausible career rehabilitation. When I said that to her, she didn't flinch. "I think that when I was in a same-sex relationship, it was hard for people to separate my message from the person I was with," she said. "The message of my life has stayed the same. I think I was a wonderful spokeswoman for the right to love." Because Heche's emotional breakdown happened the day after her breakup with DeGeneres – she turned up near Fresno, dressed in a bra and shorts at someone's front door, asking to take a shower before leaving Earth on her spaceship – people seemed to think it was a reaction to DeGeneres. But Heche wrote in her memoir that Celestia began six years earlier, after her mother's refusal to acknowledge her abuse. "In that moment I split off from myself," she wrote. While working on movies she would go to her trailer to transcribe messages she believed she was receiving from God, as Celestia. To have crashed so publicly and rebounded so mightily is no less than extraordinary. "I went to a lot of therapy," she said. "I talked my head off and pounded enough pillows and confronted enough ghosts. I didn't avoid the feelings of what my childhood was. I went right into them." She does seem remarkably free of anger or bitterness. "I think people saw how hard it was for me," she said. "It's what makes me the artist that I am, it's my bag of sorrow, of human tragedy that I've lived through, and I go to this well every time I create a character. But that no longer dictates my daily life." Neither does religion. When I asked her the differences between evangelical and fundamentalist – her family slid between the two – she said she didn't know. "We went through different phases of being every kind of whatever kept the blinders on," she said. "I had a mother whose whole life was based on not looking around or knowing anything. It's not a big mystery how people hide abuse. They keep somebody in a bubble, and they go and do whatever the hell they want, and the person in the bubble says: 'I love my bubble. I don't want out of it.' Then 20 years later, you're confronted with truths that happened from all your children, and you say, 'I was in a bubble.'" She sighed. "There's no mystery to any life story. How do you think I turned out the way that I am? Because every single thing in my life leads to it. Every single thing in her life leads to where she is – still living in a bubble. It's why my brother ended up on the side of a road." She stopped talking then and looked at me, seeming suddenly to realise someone else was there. She took a deep breath. "I hear people's stories," she said quietly, "and I'm so touched by how people survive their lives." On the afternoon of the Hung premiere, Heche stood on her tiny patch of backyard, giving Tupper a haircut. Upstairs, Homer was setting out his pirate treasure so I could see it. Heche finished the haircut. "I'll take my tip in cash," she joked and we went upstairs to admire the treasure. Tupper, who is 43, used to be a carpenter. He is handsome and low-key and seems somewhat amused by his success in Men in Trees and by the absurdity of show business in general. Next to the cylindrical fireplace sat a pile of old scripts, ready to be burned. Tupper was about to relocate to New York to star in a new NBC medical drama, Mercy , and he appears with Claire Danes and Zac Efron in Me and Orson Welles , the new Richard Linklater movie, which opens in December. But for the moment, he chopped carrots and celery, boiled corn on the cob for Homer's lunch and made him macaroni and cheese. Not Kraft. From scratch. It was the afternoon of the Hung premiere. Patrick Jagaille, the hairstylist, and Gregory Arlt, the make-up artist, arrived and set up shop on the kitchen counter. Arlt had brought a CD with him, and soon there was music playing and a blow-dryer blowing. "Let the party begin," Heche said, as her stylists, Wendi and Nicole Ferreira, rolled a dress rack through the front door and proceeded to cover the dining-room table with jewellery. Tupper reached for his keys. "Should I get some champagne?" he asked. Heche nodded. "It's a tradition for us," she said, as he headed out. This did not make Homer happy. "Mommy, how far away is the wine?" he asked. Arlt didn't miss a beat. "I ask myself that question every day," he said. Homer rebounded. "Is it OK if I move this a little bit?" he asked, wheeling the dress rack away from his basketball hoop. The stylists worked around him, opening boxes of shoes, propping up evening bags next to each pair. "I'm not much of a nit-picker," Heche said, watching. "If I need them to, they can pick it out almost without me there. I say, 'Thank you so much for making me look like this' and go." Heche's dress was fitted the day before; another dress was for the Hung wrap party that weekend. "Champagne, ladies?" Tupper poured flutes of Mumm and handed them around. "Here's to you darlin'," Arlt said to Heche. They have worked together for seven years, and he knows how to jolly her up and calm her down when the red carpet looms. Heche's upturned face remained serene as she sat, perfectly still, eyes closed. As Arlt worked, an eyebrow appeared. Then two. Atlas woke up and fussed in his crib. "Hi, sweet boy," Heche called, without moving, as the nanny went to get him. Jagaille twisted long fat banana curls into her hair as Arlt drew her mouth and started on her eyes. Jagaille blew out the curls, pulling them into waves. Arlt handed her a bottle of liquid lip gloss. "For your bag," he said. She checked the bathroom mirror to see how she looked. "I love it," she exclaimed, kissing and hugging them both. She went upstairs to put on her dress, and Tupper went to shower. She came back down in her black Paule Ka dress, and Wendi tied the bow around the waist, moving it to the back. Wendi held up a pair of shoes with what looked like five- or six-inch heels. "Are these Jimmy Choos?" Heche asked. Wendi hesitated. "Why, do you hate them?" she asked. "People think they're uncomfortable." Heche put them on, anyway. "We're not going for comfort tonight." She walked around. "Years of soap-opera training," she said. "People thought it taught me how to act, but it really taught me how to walk in high heels." Nicole fastened an intricate silver necklace, almost like chain mail, around her neck and put on a ring and earrings. She was in full movie-star mufti. She stood still while they taped her bra to the deep scoop of the dress in the back. In the car, the three of us made small talk, and Heche seemed preternaturally calm until we were almost there. Then, in a burst of nerves, she whipped out a mirror to reapply her lip gloss and forced a laugh. She turned her face away and looked out the window. She hadn't had this much at stake in a while. As we pulled into the Paramount lot, it was hard not to feel a shiver of excitement. A bevy of handlers appeared and hustled Heche toward the red carpet. She stepped on to it and the cameras flashed, blinding and white. Perfectly composed, she fielded the shouts: "Anne! Turn left! Anne! Over your shoulder!" Obligingly, she pivoted this way and that. The shouts kept coming, and she kept smiling. For a few seconds the glare abated when the photographers paused and Heche peered past them, catching my eye. She grinned – a real, happy grin. Yes, work is worth. But at that moment, on the way back up, it was also tremendous fun.★ Johnny Depp guardian.co.uk © Guardian News & Media Limited 2009 | Use of this content is subject to our Terms & Conditions | More Feeds

Time for Manhunt To Admit Straights [The Gays]

As we learned from the lawsuit filed to open Christian dating site eHarmony to homosexuals, everyone wants to take advantage of Neil Clark Warren's methodology that pairs compatible couples. Per the terms of this week's settlement between the dating site and the state of New Jersey, eHarmony will create Compatible Partners, a separate but equal branch of the popular dating site. Congrats to the gays, but those on the straighter side don't really care who uses eHarmony: they just want the unfair barrier to insanely popular gay dating side Manhunt eradicated. New Jersey, tear down that wall! EHarmony was launched in 2000 by evangelical Christian PhD Neil Clark Warren, and purports to base itself on research of heterosexual couples. Following in the footsteps of the once staunchly hetero Jewish site JDate, the new sit Compatible Partners will use the same hokum to cater to a different clientele. The New Jersey Law Against Discrimination has had strange bedfellows before , and now some are suggesting it's only a matter of time before other niche websites will be forced to admit everyone. The fight against discrimination rolls on! Here comes the story of the Hurricane: it's long past time that popular gay cruising site ManHunt includes str8s. We felt the bear pain of computer programmer/petitioner Eric McKinley, 46, who described the frustration that straight users of Manhunt must feel every single day of their lives : "It’s a great victory...I tried to use their Web site, and you simply cannot. You only have two options: a man seeking a woman or a woman seeking a man. I’m a man seeking a man, and obviously I can’t force it to change its interface." Most big dating sites now allow same-sex matches, and yet the site most likely to get you laid refuses heteros. Selfish bastards! If evangelical Christians can help gay couples find happiness, I'm sure the legal community can find someone to sue so that Manhunt's gay community is forced to help straights in their quest for love. For example: what is this asshole orifice we've heard so much about? A helpful FAQ is long overdue, as is an explanation of this top/bottom dichotomy. The Manhunt site tour promises "tasty tops" and "hungry bottoms." I've practiced on Oreos, but I still don't completely understand. And what exactly is a Man Cam — they should be forced to be more specific. Is it just a webcam for guys? Could we use it in schools? Now is exactly to the time to attack: while the gay lobby stupidly has its eye off the ball. As the legal director for the National Center for Lesbian Rights put it, "We are focused on discrimination against parents, discrimination in employment, the real core issues that have a severely negative impact on our community." Fools! And we have the perfect lawyer for the cause: former Bush solicitor general Theodore Olson sure did seem glum after the courts ruled against him and his client eHarmony. He'll obviously be happy to help bring Manhunt over to the hetero fold. And it's not like Manhunt hasn't dipped its toes into straighter waters before. Site chairman Jonathan Crutchley had to resign late last summer when it was revealed he'd made a sizeable donation to the McCain campaign. This discrimination will not stand. Heteros can sit in silence no longer — Manhunt belongs to us, too.

BiZone

'BiZone' (formerly the Bisexual Network of New Jersey) is a statewide member-based organization created to foster a visible community for bisexual, bi-curious, bi-friendly people, their partners, and allies who live in New Jersey. The organization supports the community through regular social events, support groups and education. The group also helps new bisexual support groups get started.

BiZone began in 1991 as a bisexual support group. After meeting at member's houses for several years, it becomes one of the first groups to start meeting in the newly opened Pride Center of New Jersey.

BiZone/The Bisexual Network of New Jersey is a member of the New Jersey Lesbian and Gay Coalition and an Organizational Member of BiNet USA.

- See also -
* Bisexual community

- External links -
* — official website
*
*

Connecticut Supreme Court Overturns Gay-Marriage Ban

State, which previously granted civil unions, becomes third to allow same-sex marriage. By Gil Kaufman

Photo: Justin Sullivan/Getty Images

Following a 4-3 ruling Friday morning (October 10) by its Supreme Court, Connecticut became the third state in the U.S. to allow gay marriage. Citing the equal-protection clause of the state constitution, the justices in the case ruled that civil unions for gay and lesbian couples were discriminatory and that the state's "understanding of marriage must yield to a more contemporary appreciation of the rights entitled to constitutional protection," according to the Hartford Courant .
"Interpreting our state constitutional provisions in accordance with firmly established equal-protection principles leads inevitably to the conclusion that gay persons are entitled to marry the otherwise qualified same-sex partner of their choice," the majority opinion in the case stated. "To decide otherwise would require us to apply one set of constitutional principles to gay persons and another to all others."
In 2005, Connecticut passed the first civil-union law in the nation that was enacted without a court mandate, and while Governor M. Jodi Rell said she disagreed with the court's decision to overturn the ban on gay marriage, she vowed to uphold it. "The Supreme Court has spoken," Rell said. "I do not believe their voice reflects the majority of the people of Connecticut. However, I am also firmly convinced that attempts to reverse this decision — either legislatively or by amending the state constitution — will not meet with success. I will therefore abide by the ruling."
Opponents of the decision said the court had "usurped democracy" in the state and "redefined marriage by judicial force,'' according to Peter Wolfgang, executive director of the Family Institute of Connecticut. The organization will now join with similar groups to help promote an initiative on the November 4 ballot asking whether the state should convene a constitutional convention to allow "direct initiatives," which would presumably allow anti-gay-rights groups to seek a state constitutional ban on same-sex marriage.
The case stemmed from a group of eight same-sex couples who were unsatisfied with the civil-union decision and sued after being denied marriage licenses in 2004, the Courant reported. Arguing that civil unions already provided all the rights and protection of marriage, the state won the case in a Superior Court ruling in 2006, which the couples appealed to the Supreme Court, arguing that civil unions were a "less prestigious, less advantageous institution." Lawyers for the couples also argued that same-sex marriage was a fundamental right guaranteed under the ban on sexual discrimination in the constitution and that the couples were being discriminated against based on sexual orientation.
The Courant reported that the court's ruling will likely be the final judicial judgment on the case because it's based on the state constitution, but opponents could still seek a constitutional amendment to ban gay marriage.
Before Friday's ruling, only Massachusetts and California had allowed same-sex couples to marry. Proposition 8, a ballot initiative that would outlaw same-sex marriages in California, will be put to a vote on November 8. According to The Associated Press , groups supporting the ban have reportedly taken in more than $25 million so far in their efforts to pass the measure, while a number of celebrities — including Fall Out Boy, Brad Pitt and Steven Spielberg — have donated large sums to oppose the ban.

Real Housewives of New Jersey : We're Talking About Blowjobs

I can't with this show. I really just can't. I mean, these are people? These are people? Last night an alien was murdered while her friends watched, two teenage girls fell off a cliff, and then everyone died. I mean, that's basically what happened. I don't even know where to start. So, using a fair and balanced deciding method, I'll just see who gets the short straw. And by "straw" I mean forehead, and by short I mean "has none." Teresa. I'm talking about Teresa. May God Himself strike me down where I sit if I tell a lie. Teresa does not have a forehead. Teresa's forehead went out for a pack of cigarettes one summer day in 1986 and never came home. Teresa's forehead ran away with the circus while its Georgia onion farmer parents watched, all dusty and sad. Teresa's forehead went to Hamilton, maybe? Or was it Middlebury? Anyway, I don't know. They just lost touch. You know, time. Years. These things happen. Teresa and her forehead will probably see each other somewhere random—that's how those things work. On the street or something. Teresa's forehead. We all miss it. I am being cruel about something a person can't help! Which is not nice. But if only Teresa didn't drag her daughter, Basilica, around everywhere making her be a pretty pretty model and actress, it would be a lot easier to be nice about her. Teresa and Maserati got in their enormous Jerseymobile and clunked it over into Manhattan so the littlest bitsywitsy could be yelled at by an old lady named Wilhelmina. No, this isn't another episode of Professor Fagtime's Fairy Hour for Lamegays Ugly Betty . Wilhelmina is a modeling agency that represents pretty people who'd like to stand in front of a camera and call it a career. Teresa is so jaundiced about her own daughter's only-sorta-cute-but-whooboy-fifteen's-gonna-be-awkward looks that she just barnstroms through and doesn't listen to the Wilhelmina ladies, except when they say "these photos are too pageant." More photos she can do. That she knows how to do. (She doesn't, incidentally, know how to pronounce her own last name. Her last name is Giudice. Which is pronounced "jew-DEE-chay", not "joodeese", T.) Dina, the one who looks like an attractive and well-timed fart, went to a big bright furniture showroom with her gay brother, Paulette. Paulette simmers Fancy Feast on a hot plate for "celebrities" (one time he touched Marilu Henner, for serious) and calls himself a chef, and also Paulette wears a fancy apron and an artist's floppy hat and calls himself a designer. He does everything! So the two of them, from a big big family of eleven, seem close, which is nice. Dina, y'see, is a bigtime interior decorator, just like the Wakefields' mom, while Ned is off being an architect. Dina has eyes that are the color of the Pacific ocean and their brother Stephen plays basketball. Enid Rollins is probably a lesbo, Lois Waller is fat, and Bruce Patman may try to sex you in a pool in book number 3, Playing with Fire . So watch out, Dina! Anyway. Dina is designing a home for some huuuuge celebrity, so call in the gay cavalry and get some approval is what she did. It was a nice scene in which Dina didn't kill anyone, so that was good. Though, in the end, Regina Morrow died of a cocaines overdosage. Which was sad. Charlie Cashman cried at the funeral. Jerry "Crunch" McAllister did not. Dina worries that her job is getting in the way of rearing her one child, which is a sad worry to have. I think you can do both. You can have it all! Just like Lila Fowler. That bitch is rich and pretty. I mean, c'mon. Who do I look like, Amy Sutton? I'm no fool. You can do both, Deenz. Oh God, and then calamity struck. The poor childlike empress that is Jacqueline fell down a well and no one could get her out. "It's... It's OK," her watery, echoed cries came up. "I can get comfortable down here..." She was trying to be brave, but everyone knew that she was sad. Because being stuck down in a well, especially on your birthday!, is no fun at all. Poor Jacqueline. While she was down there, she had a conversation with her daughter, who looks like what would happen if Christian Siriano and Zak Orth had a gay buttbaby. The daughter, whose name I believe is Hippilotta Longstocking, doesn't ever go to school and when she does she's dumb, so she's failing Maths, Readings, and Histories. Which means she has to go to summry school, a fate worse than death, lemme tell you. When I was a boy, wearing shortpants and a jaunty newsman's cap, I had to go to two summers of summerschool not because I had to, but because my mother wanted me to . Yep! I took Latin! In the summer . And a typing class, which I oddly loved. Plus, we did plays and there was tennis. So I guess it wasn't so bad. But Hippilotta! You're going to poor Jersey private school summerschool! You're fucked like Tuck Everlasting! You're gonna be sitting on that boring old Ferris wheel alllll summer long. Sucks to be you! Guess you shouldn't have figured you were better than school because you're young and you've, um, got your looks (?). Life moves, girlie. And it ain't gonna wait while you get your shit together. Pretty soon you'll be 30 damn years old and working at the Lancome booth at the mall is going to start to feel like prison. Trust me, I know. One summer my mom made me work at the Lancome booth at the Chestnut Hill Filene's. Speaking of dumb people and makeup, Caroline Manzo took time from her busy murdering people for opening their dumb stupid stoolie mouths schedule and yelled at her daughter about jobs. See, Dr. Giggles wants to do makeups, but wants to halfass it. And Carrie Manzo will not tolerate halfassery. If her beautiful daughter Dr. Giggles wants to do makeups, she's going to own her own Makeup Spa. A primping station for all the lawds and ladeez of Jersey to get in their finest before hobbling up to play courtiers at Versailles . "Let them eat funnel cake!", Caroline is often heard yelling on balconies, brandishing a pistol. And if there's one thing that spa owners have to do, it's do waxing. Because there are no young, impressionable Chinese ladies with families back home to feed who are willing to do that for you. There is no such thing in America as that. Dr. Giggles can't stand the idea of waxing, but if she attends the prestigious Madam Bovary's Refining Makeup School for Ladies (and Bartending Academy), as her mother wants her to, then she has to do waxing. Life is all about hard choices. Life is about doing things we don't want to do, because they'll help us in the long run. For some, that means joining the military to pay for a college degree. For others, that means working two or three jobs so the kids will have dinner on the table. And for some, for the bravest and most humble of all, it means putting hot wax on people's giners and then pulling it off. That sound of olive oil sluicing through cheesecloth isn't being made by Wendy from accounting making one of her trademark healthy salads in the breakroom. (No, Wendy died in a car accident this morning. I'm sorry.) That sound is actually coming from last night, when Teresa the Pest took her daughter, Puttanesca, to a new photoshoot so her big modeling pictures wouldn't look pageanty so Wilhelmina won't get mad again. Basically it was a horrorshow in which America's youth all fell over dead and then Wendy drove by and while she was gawping at the heinousness she plowed into a tree and now she's dead and who will send out those cute Christmas e-cards this year? Will anyone??? I can't really talk more about the fashionshoot because at one point little Fiat struck a pose in a doorway that could only be described as "come-hither" and it makes me sad to think about it. So please let's just move on. Ohhh holy Toledo. Gabaranzo had a party. Garbanzo had a party and everyone came. Why someone would voluntarily look like an insect is beyond me. But Garbanzo wants to look like an insect, features wise, and so she does. A bug. Bzzt bzzt bzzt. That's Garbanzo. Garbz had a party that was basically like being invited to the filming of a snuff movie. Everyone—even archnemesis Dina!—came over to sit in a circle and watch in abject terror as a crazed Marathon Men -esque doctor performed bizarre procedures on Garbanzo's face. Dina kept making bitchy quips about how she could never, ever get Botox. And, um, either her face naturally looks like a Fruit Roll-Up or her husband is sneakily injecting her face with horse disease while she sleeps. Because, um, dag. But whatever, Dina bitched anyway. "It just looks so weird," she remarked as Dr. Mengele lowered the circular saw onto Garbanzo's mug. The creepiest thing of all was that Garby's daughters were there, watching in curious horror as their mother had an Eyeball Dampening and a "face tuck," which involved six orderlies, a pneumatic nail gun, and a reading of the Magna Carta. Later everyone heard a whimpering coming from under the porch and we all realized that poor Jacqueline had gotten herself stuck under there, the dear creature. "Someone get a broom or call the fire department," Caroline huffed, bending over and peering into the narrow space, barely able to make out a bit of Jacqueline's dirt-covered face. "Goddammit, who left the screen door open? I told you this would happen. It happens every time." After the fire trucks left and Caroline gave her a stiff hug and said "Yeah, let's get you some water, huh? It's scary under there, isn't it?", Jacqueline chirped the tale of Despereaux, her daughter Hippilotta. See Hippy just shouldn't get anything new because her grades and all and—oh holy cats, what is that driving up in the front driveway? A fucking white Jeep Grand Cherokee. For Hippy. See, papa Jacqui bought it because you're only an eclair-faced youngster but once in this ultimately-fatal merry-go-round ride, so why not have an unearned automobile. Just steer clear of where Wendy drives when she's been drinking. Poor Jacqueline got sad so she tried to run to Caroline's master bedroom and pee in the same corner of the walk-in closet that she always pees in when she's upset or startled by lightning, but Caroline grabbed her by the collar and swatted her behind and said "No! No! You do your business outside." Later Caroline felt bad so she let her have a piece of porkchop, having her eat it in the mud room. "It's good, huh?" she cooed, stroking happy Jacqui's glossy hair. "Yeah, it's good. And you're good." It was mealtime then, and so most people grabbed their S.O.'s and trotted off to Varka, a fancy Greek restaurant, to have dinner with friends. Like something Donald Margulies would write when drunk and trying to make Naomi Iizuka laugh (they hang out, I'm sure of it), the conversation eventually devolved into Garbanzo being weird about her boyfriend, Bergdorf, who was sitting right next to her. And... OK. Bergdorf is supposed to be 26-years-old. And, my birthday is on Sunday and I'm turning 26 and I don't care that he's balding or what have you, but fool is NOT 26. Fool is like 34 on a good day. Everybody's all pretending that "ohhh, Garby got herself a younger man" and whatnot. And, yes, he's younger. Garby is a 68 years young, and Bergdorf is 41, so there is an age difference. But if one more person tries to tell me that that asshat is 26-years-old, well then I'm just going to kill myself the day before my birthday. Because I don't want to look like that come Sunday. But the point is: Garbz is having trouble with the boytoy, mostly because he's not very nice to her. That he doesn't squish her underfoot like most people would do to a bug that shows up uninvited for dinner is, in my book, generous enough. But I guess the G wants more, but more she shall not shan't get, nay. So a day or two after dinner, in a fitful teary state, she called up Teresa and Jacqueline because she needed to talk about breakups. When to do 'em, how to do 'em, etsetrah. No one in the whole world understood why she felt it necessary to bring her kids to Jacqueline's gigantic house, but she did, so they were sent off to dig for old coins in the backyard while the grownups had a young adult conversation. Teresa tried to offer some advice, but Garbs just struck her down, because really she just wanted to hear herself talk, nothing else. Teresa took this as an opportunity to tell us, the people playing at home, that G's 48-year-old boyfriend Bergdorf is only in it for the BJ's. No, Garbanzo is not a member of an economy-sized foodclub. I'm talking about fellatio . No, not that restaurant in Ho-Ho-Kus (although that place is fabulous ). I mean that David Crosby likes to go over to Garbanzo's house, unzip his trousers, sit in a chair in the foyer so the girls can see, and then Garbanzo walks in, puts on some Vitamin E lip balm, opens her leathery mouth, and... They all sing a song! That's what happens! La la la. That is it. Nothing else. Ohhh for the love of Trudy Styler, that's all that happens. I'm shivering right now. I'm so very, very cold. So the world died and dried and shriveled up when Teresa said that thing that she said, but then it brightened a bit and bloomed a little when T went back to Wilhelmina and Old Lady Looks was nice and called the terrible new photos not pageanty and so everyone was thrilled. On the way home, Teresa said "we just have one more stop..." and she pulled up to a dilapidated building where a weathered sign hung in the window, saying "Private Investigator." Teresa sat down at the PI's desk and opened her purse. She smiled sadly, politely. She took a manila envelope out and slid it across the desk. "I need you to find this," she said softly. The PI opened the envelope and saw that it contained one photograph. He looked at it. It was a picture, taken some years ago, of a forehead. He leaned back. This case was gonna be a doozy of a dingle. "OK," he said finally. "I can do that. But it's gonna cost you." Teresa looked hopeful. "I'll pay cash." At the end of the episode, everyone started to figure out that Garbanzo is a weirdo and a liar and that maybe there is something awful and wicked that she's keeping secret. Caroline, being the feistiest and craftiest and most-connected of the group, decided that she would get to the bottom of this thing. She might not like what she finds, but at least she'll know. Maybe Garbs is a Colombian drug cartel's moll. Maybe she's an informant. Maybe she's just emerged from her pupal state and we should all cut her a little slack. Maybes upon maybes! If wishes were maybes, we'd all be at Rocky Point Park. But wishes aren't maybes. Maybes are other things. They're small and flat and brown. You could skip a maybe across a lake forever. For now we'll just have to wait, while the sun curls around the Jersey pines and our hearts fill with the particular knowledge that— Hey. Hey! Hold on a sec, it's that damn Jacqueline. Hey! Get outta there. That is my garden and I will not tolerate. Hey! Hey! I swear to God, hold on I have to go over there. Hey! Stop that! Shoo! Hon, call Mr. Laurita and tell him Jacqui's back. Shit, c'mon, get outta there! Goddammit. Goddamn Jacqui.. Hey! Hey you! Why don't you cut that out...

The Empress Hotel (New Jersey)

'The Empress Hotel', located in Asbury Park, New Jersey, is a popular gay resort.

The Hotel opened as a luxury resort for vacationing families in the 1950s.

In 1980, the Empress was featured on the picture sleeve of Bruce Springsteen's hit single "Hungry Heart", which depicts a photo of Springsteen standing near a phone booth on the Asbury Park boardwalk, with the hotel visible in the background.

It was abandoned for nearly a decade when, in 1998, Shep Pettibone bought the abandoned building and opened the Paradise Nightclub inside . The nightclub lured crowds of gay travelers away from Fire Island and instead to the beaches of Asbury Park.
The hotel portion reopened in August 2004 , and is very popular among gay, lesbian, bisexual, and transgender travelers in New Jersey.

In 2008, a dining establishment, the 'Ketchup Grill' opened inside. A clothing store, Esphera, catering to gay beach-goers, was added to the ground level in 2008 and is open during the summer months.

The ...

Page Tapped For Lesbian Role

Juno star Ellen Page will take on yet another controversial movie role - the actress has been tapped to play a lesbian in a new film based on a true story. Page, who played a pregnant teen in the 2007 film, will star in the forthcoming drama about Laurel Hester, a terminally ill New Jersey police officer who fought

Polling and Political Wrap-Up, 10/14/09

As we reach (an unusually wet, at least here in SoCal) midweek, we have quite a few political stories to ponder as we descend the hill towards the weekend.... NJ-Gov: Yet Another Poll Has It Deadlocked, Obama to Jump Into Race Two big headlines out of the Garden State today (well, three, if you count the new ethical imbroglio in which Christie has managed to get caught up). A new poll was released by Quinnipiac this morning has two characteristics common to every poll taken in the state in the last two weeks: Corzine is closer now than he was in the previous poll, and the race is an absolute coin-flip. The net result is a Christie lead of just a point (41-40-14). Meanwhile, in news that should fire up Corzine supporters, the President will be making a return appearance to the state next week, stumping in Hackensack for the Democratic incumbent. PA-Sen: Sestak Beats Toomey, Specter Loses To Him, According to Ras A new survey released late in the day by Rasmussen confirms a trend that has been noticeable over several recent surveys. The long-promulgated meme that Specter, as a former Republican, is somehow more electable than Joe Sestak, continues to take a beating . In the new Rasmussen poll on the Pennsylvania Senate race, incumbnent Senator Specter trails likely GOP nominee Patrick Toomey by five points (45-40), while challenger Sestak actually leads Toomey by a point (38-37). In campaign finance news, Specter announced a haul of 1.8 million dollars for the quarter, which also gives him over 8 million in cash on hand. FL-Gov: GOP Poll For Chamber of Commerce Gives GOP Modest Lead There is an interesting poll floating around in the Sunshine State that was conducted for the Florida Chamber of Commerce by little known Cherry Communications. Alas, it was not this part of the poll that was terribly intriguing. According to the Chamber, Republican Bill McCollum has a seven-point edge over Democrat Alex Sink (42-35). This is slightly closer than the Chamber's previous poll over the summer. The intriguing aspect of the poll is still only rumor, and it is on the Senate side of the electoral ledger.... FL-Sen: Chamber Sitting on Tightening Poll Numbers?? ...Where you have to read between the lines, but the St. Petersburg Times is saying "We've heard some Buzz about very interesting Marco Rubio vs. Charlie Crist numbers in a new Florida Chamber of Commerce poll". This, of course, is little more than speculation on my part, but another 20-30 point lead would not be considered "very interesting." They must have numbers which put Rubio within striking distance. There is one other interesting component of the Chamber's poll vis-a-vis Governor Charlie Crist. The CoC poll gives Crist pretty darned good approval numbers (62/28). This is a decline from the Chamber's previous survey, when Crist had a glowing 67% job approval. Where this gets really curious is the fact that Insider Advantage released their own Crist job approval numbers, and they found them to be extremely different from the CoC poll. Insider Advantage had Crist's job approval spread at a fairly woeful 48/41 . This, of course, is far worse than anyone else has shown. NY-15: Charlie Rangel Might Be Primaried By Former Staffer In an interesting twist that might speak to the ethics woes plaguing the longtime Congressman, New York Democrat Charlie Rangel is facing potential primary challenge from the man who was his campaign director earlier in the decade. His name is Vincent Morgan, and he works now as a community banker. He is quoted as saying, "It's time to think about what comes after Charlie. We need a change." Rangel is currently under an ethics committee investigation. VA-Gov: McDonnell is Anti-Anti-Discrimination Shorter Bob McDonnell: As governor I will permit discrimination toward gay and lesbian people. Longer Bob McDonnell is, well, longer. He's hoping you've stopped listening by the time he answers the question. (Via AmericaBlog ) -- (Laura Clawson) THE MONEY CHASE: On Deadline Eve, More Campaigns Show Their Cards Lots of financial reports to mull over as we approach the October 15th deadline to submit third quarter fundraising figures to the FEC. The theme for the day was monstrous third-quarter hauls from challengers in the 2010 election cycle. The big number came from former Congressman Steve Pearce in NM-02 , where he hauled in over $500K for the quarter. Democrats had their own reasons to crow today: in PA-15 , Bethlehem Mayor John Callahan made it clear that he is dead serious about taking down fourth-term incumbent Republican Charlie Dent, as Callahan amassed a total over $345K for the quarter. Across the country in CA-03 , physician Ami Bera followed up an eye-popping second quarter (just under 300K) with an even stronger 3rd quarter ($335K). Bera is one of a handful of Democrats challenging Republican Dan Lungren, who was elected with just 49% of the vote last year. At the statewide level, there were a pair of eye-poppers, but going in different directions. In Texas , where Kay Bailey Hutchison is expected to resign to pursue the governorship, Democrat Bill White had another solid quarter, logging $1.5 million for the quarter and bringing himself over $6 million for the cycle. On the other side of the coin was incumbent Democrat Chris Dodd in Connecticut , whose 3rd quarter total of $900K is likely to be less than two of his Republican rivals (Rob Simmons and Linda McMahon). In Dodd's defense, he did have to leave the campaign circuit during the August break as he was recovering from cancer surgery. IN OTHER NEWS.... More hard-to-fathom Democratic "bipartisanship", as Democrat Bart Stupak throws down twenty five hundred dollars to get Republican Zach Wamp elected Governor of Tennessee (actually, this is apparently personal friendship at work). As alluded to briefly above, Linda McMahon is going to spend lavishly from her own pocket, and she is also trying hard to portray herself as the lamentable victim of a gang-up attack from the other Republicans in the race. It will likely be hard to feel twinges of sympathy for someone who has already spent over two million bucks in the first few weeks of her campaign. Michael Steele might be learning. After seeming to endorse Illinois Senate candidate Mark Kirk (and then having to retract said endorsement), Steele seems to have found the right formula. He said the requisite nice things about longtime Utah incumbent Senator Bob Bennett , but made it clear that Utahns would be the ultimate "deciders" of Bennett's fate. As Mr. "Pull the Plug on Grandma" himself, Chuck Grassley (R-IA), deals with flagging poll numbers, he also finds a potentially explosive Democratic candidate contemplating a bid: former Iowa first lady Christie Vilsack . Speaking of Iowa, former Governor Terry Branstad is apparently going to make his comeback bid official this Friday . This morning, Politico threw out a pretty unbelievable scenario: can Democrats score the upset in the November special election to replace John McHugh in NY-23 because the Republican nominee runs out of cash ?

Sakia Gunn

'Sakia Gunn' (May 26, 1987-May 11, 2003) was a 15-year old African American lesbian who was murdered in a hate crime in Newark, New Jersey. On the night of May 11, Gunn was returning from a night out in Greenwich Village, Manhattan with her friends. While waiting for the #1 New Jersey Transit bus at the corner of Broad and Market Streets in downtown Newark, Gunn and her friends were propositioned by two men. When the girls rejected their advances, by declaring themselves to be lesbians, the men attacked them. Gunn fought back, and one of the men, Richard McCullough, stabbed her in the chest. Both men immediately fled the scene in their vehicle. After one of Gunn's friends flagged down a passing driver, she was taken to nearby University Hospital, where she died.

McCullough, who turned himself in to authorities several days later, was arrested in connection with the crime on May 16, 2003. In a plea bargain, the murder charges were dropped and, on March 3, 2005, McCullough pleaded ...

Church group discrimination against New Jersey lesbians ruled unlawful

A church group yesterday lost its case to a lesbian couple who it barred from holding a civil ceremony on their property.

Civil unions were introduced in New Jersey after the state Supreme Court's 2006 ruling that gay and lesbian couples are entitled to equal civil rights.

Brad and Angelina Are Getting Married to Squelch Rumors of Their Love's Demise [Gossip Roundup]

Brad and Angelina are getting married in New Orleans, Brooke Shields settled with the National Enquirer for kidnapping her mother, Mariah Carey is getting fat, Pete Doherty shot up on a commercial flight, and Denise Richards is addicted to boob jobs. Friends of Brad Pitt and Angelina Jolie say that the couple is planning to get married in New Orleans, perhaps at the end of the summer. Pitt and Jolie have resisted getting married in the past, but feel motivated to show the world that they're really in love and aren't breaking up any time soon by getting hitched, a move sure to kill the relationship once and for all. [ UK Mirror ] Brooke Shields has reached a settlement with the National Enquirer after reporters for the tabloid did one of the most bizarre things in history of "journalism"—-They showed up at a New Jersey nursing home that cares for Shields' dementia-addled mother and checked her out of the facility, claiming to be "friends" of hers. [ Daily News ] Mariah Carey is getting fat but her people claim that it's all good because she loves food and isn't afraid to pack on a few pounds to enhance her "curves." In other news, Mariah Carey recently got married, a social condition that often leads to weight gain by all parties involved. [ New York Post ] Britney Spears ' LSU football-loving dad has banned booze from backstage during her concert tour in a desperate attempt to keep her sober, but that hasn't stopped Britney from hitting the London club scene during her time there. [ Sun ] Pete Doherty was on a British Airways flight to Switzerland and needed a fix, so he got out of his seat in coach, marched on down to the plane's bathroom and shot himself up. He was arrested when the plane landed. It's possible that his little act, which we suppose gives new meaning to the term "mile high club," may get him banned from the airline for life. [ Dlisted ] Denise Richards has had three boob jobs so far in her life, but she doesn't think that the kids out there should ever consider having one, because the kids are beautiful and don't need to have boob jobs, or something. [ UK Sun ] So Dr. Drew stated the obvious and said that Lindsay Lohan is a trainwreck who will more than likely wind up dead before she can clean her life up, then Lohan responded by trashing Dr. Drew on her Twitter and now the Dr. Drew/Lindsay Lohan catfight you've all been waiting for is in full swing. [ EOnline ] Gordon Ramsey got pissed at an Australian journalist and called her a "lesbian pig," and now women's groups are calling Ramsey a pig. [ UK Mirror ] Ryan Phillippe and Abbie Cornish spent the weekend watching Phillippe's children with Reese Witherspoon play Little League baseball. [ PITNB ]

Boy Scouts of America v. Dale

'Boy Scouts of America et al. v. Dale', , was a case of the Supreme Court of the United States overturning the New Jersey Supreme Court's application of the New Jersey public accommodations law, which had forced the Boy Scouts of America (BSA) to readmit assistant Scoutmaster 'James Dale'. When he was a student at Rutgers University, Dale became copresident of the Lesbian/Gay student alliance. Then, in July 1990, he attended a seminar on the health needs of lesbian and gay teenagers. During the seminar, he was interviewed, and the work was subsequently published. and was decided on June 28, 2000.

Dale was represented by Evan Wolfson, an attorney and noted gay/lesbian rights advocate. In addition to representing Dale, Wolfson has also worked on a number of high profile cases seeking legal recognition of same-sex marriages. Also representing Dale on a pro bono basis was the New York-based law firm Cleary Gottlieb Steen & Hamilton.

The Boy Scouts of America were represented by attorney ...

AP Dispatch Spikes Conservatives in Gay Therapy Story (Updated)

Associated Press reporter David Crary reported on Wednesday that the American Psychological Association voted 125 to 4 to repudiate "reparative therapy" to reorient homosexuals as unscientific and even harmful. But that was a more balanced vote than the AP article that appeared in many papers and websites, in which Crary couldn't find a single conservative voice -- even if the losing opinion was repeatedly identified as conservative, and the winning side drew no label at all.
In a resolution adopted by the APA's governing council, and in an accompanying report, the association issued its most comprehensive repudiation of "reparative therapy" — a concept espoused by a small but persistent group of therapists, often allied with religious conservatives , who maintain gays can change.

Crary explicitly set up the conflict as religious conservatives versus "mental health professionals," which would suggest the conservatives aren't professionals, they're quacks:
Judith Glassgold, a Highland Park, N.J., psychologist who chaired the task force, said she hoped the document could help calm the polarized debate between religious conservatives who believe in the possibility of changing sexual orientation and the many mental health professionals who reject that option .

Crary also failed to balance the story with the recent case of Kerry Pacer , the lesbian Person of the Year now living with a man.
CORRECTION: My original draft suggested David Crary excluded all conservatives and ex-gay therapists from his story. That's what I saw online and in the Rockford newspaper I read on vacation. Ironically, more thorough Googling finds a more thorough, slightly more balanced story at -- the blog Steve Rothaus' Gay South Florida .